Monday, October 3, 2011

Making kitchen scrap fly

I have recently been watching some very interesting films. One was Waste Land (http://www.wastelandmovie.com/) whichcovers the artistic work of Vik Muniz done in collaboration with the recyclers who work on a landfill in Rio de Janeiro and another was No Impact Man. Both are well worth watching. In our home we started composting about a couple of years ago. We just handle it in two large concrete pots with lids to keep away rats. It works very well and it is probably the biodiversity hotspot within our home. There are so many critters living off this resource.

Yesterday, I was watching the soldier flies (Hermetia sp.) emerging and some of them were laying eggs. I was mainly admiring the beautiful patterns in their eyes.

Soldier fly Hermetia sp.

The eye up close

It such a joy to see the biomass from the kitchen being converted into these insects. I was however quite surprised that many people see this as a problem. Some university extension sites even have guidelines on how to deal with them.

If one can afford to have the composting done outdoors, one should perhaps really be aiming to produce more flies.

PS: The images are taken with the Panasonic FZ100 with the Raynox DCR 250 magnifier which now makes the new camera compete with my old 3.2 Megapixel CoolPix. Thanks greatly to Ullas for importing the DCR-250 lens.

In case you want to start composting - there is an excellent introduction (and no, you do not need African earthworms) here.

Nice write up and images. Black soldier flies are farmed on food waste and the matured larvae are fed to chicken as high protein and fat diet. I too had good amount of soldier flies in my compost posts in Bangalore. They are very quick in digesting food waste. http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/1610486